Author: Michelle Dobrovolny

03/04/2011

Food security has been the hallmark of Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika's rule, yet half a million Malawians are at risk of starving. Photo by Jenny Vaughan.

By Michelle Dobrovolny

Following a famine in 2002, in which thousands died and three million people were relying on food aid, Malawi has turned itself around and recorded a surplus of maize, the country’s staple crop, for the past five years.

There is enough food for everybody. So why, according to a recent report from the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee, are half a million Malawians still at risk of starving?

Malawi is a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the international treaty which determines access to food as a human right. Further, the right to food is included in the national constitution.

Unfortunately, neither has done much to prevent people from going hungry in the country.

Chandiwira Chisi, a food security activist working for the international NGO ActionAid, says that without having the right to food enshrined in law, such food inequities will continue to exist. That’s why right to food legislation is being pushed by a number of NGOs in the country.

“If we have a clearly developed law in place,” says Chisi, “it could guarantee that citizens of different social levels can protect their right to food.”

As economist Amartya Sen famously argued, people don’t go hungry because a country lacks food but because certain people don’t have access to food. Preventing famine isn’t simply about producing more food. In most cases, the food is there.

Malawi is a case in point. Food security has been the hallmark of Bingu wa Mutharika’s presidency since he took office in 2004. Millions of Malawians were relying on food aid in 2002. The recent surpluses are credited to a fertilizer subsidy program that Mutharika supported in 2005. Thousands of kilograms of fertilizer are distributed each year to the 80 per cent of Malawians who rely on subsistence farming.

Carol Samdup, an advisor for the Canadian NGO, Rights & Democracy, who helped draft the right to food bill, says the new legislation will allow government to be held accountable when food shortages arise as a result of mismanagement.

“The value of the human rights framework is that it elevates food security from an aspirational goal to a legal obligation of the state,” says Samdup. “Consequently, [people] are able to hold the state accountable when policies are ineffective, discriminatory, or harmful of their enjoyment of their right to food.”

The bill also proposes to establish an arms-length investigative body to look into—and hopefully prevent—potential food violations. Similar legislation providing for the right to food has been adopted in ten countries over the past decade.

The Malawian right to food bill was first drafted in 2002 but it has been passing hands since and, nearly a decade later, it seems the political will to push it forward has evaporated.

“Initially, the government was on board when it came to recognition of a right to food framework,” says Chisi. “But then, early in 2010, we began seeing a change on their part. They began expressing fears that the Right to Food bill would exert too much pressure on government.”

Samdup has heard similar concerns from the Malawian administration.

“There seems to be a misunderstanding about the right to food within Malawi’s government,” she says. “It doesn’t mean that you have to feed people. It means you have to provide the platform from which people can feed themselves.”

Dr. Andrew Daudi, secretary for the agriculture ministry, refused to comment on the government’s position.

Whether or not the Right to Food bill would prove effective remains to be seen. What is clear is that with half a million presently at risk of starving, subsidizing fertilizers and international treaties have not been enough to prevent people from going hungry in Malawi.

11/15/2010

The Latin alphabet is so familiar that few of us pause to question its use. But its application to a number of non-European languages is in fact quite controversial. Letters can carry meaning as much as words. For Malawian scholar Nolen Mwangwego, the Latin letters used to transcribe most African languages—including Malawi’s vernacular, Chichewa—are politically-loaded ideograms of Western economic and cultural dominance.

"Why do we use the English alphabet to write our languages?" he asks. "In our languages [in Malawi] we have a verb that means 'to write'. In Chichewa, it is kulemba. So if this verb exists, it means that people used to write before colonization. We did have our own way of writing. It makes sense that we would have one again."

Accordingly, Mwangwego has developed an alphabet specifically for the Tumbuka, Chichewa and Sena languages spoken in Malawi. His script, unabashedly named Mwangwego Script, serves two purposes: as political statement, and as an improved representation for the unique qualities of these languages.

In Africa, the alphabet is political. With the exception of Ethiopia, Algeria and Vai, where syllabaries have existed for centuries, African societies were traditionally oral cultures. Literacy came with Christian missionaries who initially wrote down African languages as a way to proselytize to the masses. Literacy in Africa was not a benign historical development but a political instrument of religious conversion and cultural colonization. For Mwangwego, the continued use of the Latin alphabet is an outdated relic of an oppressive history.

"We were colonized. That colonization is still in our minds," he says echoing the sentiment of Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiongo.

Mwangwego is not the first African to develop an alphabet as a political statement. In 1949, author Souleymane Kante introduced the N'ko alphabet to Guinea, which soon spread across West Africa. Kante described his syllabary as a response to the denigration of oral culture by the West as well as an attempt to preserve traditional forms of knowledge.

Mwangwego Script, however, serves a pragmatic as well as political purpose. The Latin alphabet is simply not designed to represent the nuances of certain sounds in Malawian languages. In Chichewa, for example, the words for with and is become the homonym ndi when transcribed with the Latin alphabet. Though meaning can generally be gleaned from context, the lack of markings for ndi can lead to confusion. Literally, the Chichewa phrase munthu ndi galu as transcribed with the Latin alphabet can be read ambiguously as "person with dog" or "person is dog."

A sample of Mwangwego Script

Mwangwego says his alphabet is also better suited to the grammatical structure of Malawian languages, which are part of the Bantu linguistic group that is dominant throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Bantu languages are constructed using prefixes and suffixes attached to root nouns. Using Latin consonants and vowels to write Chichewa can make for overly-long constructions. For example, the word zosiyanasiyana, meaning "different things", takes only 7 characters using Mwanwego script, as opposed to the 14 required with the Latin alphabet.

Mwangwego began teaching his script to others in 2001, forming a community of about 200 adherents who use it to communicate amongst one another via email and at social gatherings. While there likely won't be a mass movement to change Malawi's alphabet any time soon, Mwangwego Script, as a political statement, claims literacy as part of Malawian culture rather than merely a Western representation of language.

"If we had our own alphabet, that would be an identity for Malawi," says Mwangwego. "It shows that writing is not just part of Western culture."

09/20/2010

For Malawian guitarist Agorosso, music is a outlet for social commentary. Photo by Michelle Dobrovolny.

By Michelle Dobrovolny

When Malawian musician Agorosso had no money for a guitar, he made one and taught himself how to play.

"I just used a small metallic pot with nylon strings,” he says. “I didn't know how to play, I just tuned it to my wish."

This kind of resourcefulness reflects the importance of music in Malawian society. In a country where literacy is stunted by lack of resources and where 85 per cent of the population lives in rural poverty, music is vital; it’s a way to reflect the thoughts and feelings of people with no other means of expression.

But music here is much more than just catharsis. As an outlet to convey the daily struggles of people facing food shortages and an HIV/AIDS epidemic, Malawian music is innately political, something Agorosso acknowledges in his own work.

"The role of the musician is to speak for the people, for those who suffer, to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. And to speak to them. Because when you compose a song, it can be heard and felt by everyone, more than just words," he says.

Agorosso, whose real name is Lloyd Phaundi, draws on the traditional melodies of his Sena heritage, a group with roots in Mozambique where Portuguese cultural influence is strong. His lyrics draw on daily life in his community.

"I compose songs based on what I have seen in the village or what I see in our day-to-day life," he says. "My music is a way of expressing what I feel, what I hear, or what I have been told."

In Kulowa Kufa, the Chichewa term for the practice of widows who are forced to marry their late husband's brother, Agorosso sings about the angst of widows and how the practice helps spread diseases such as HIV/AIDS. His open criticism of cultural customs is rare in Malawi, particularly in rural villages where tradition is valued above all else.

If he is allowed room for social critique, it is because musicians in Malawi are often granted license as a kind of alangizi or "advisor." Much like the court jesters of medieval Europe, alangizi express through art what is otherwise taboo. In his music, Agorosso sings about what is not talked about in everyday conversation.

"In song, I can be free to speak about such things," he says. "And when there is truth in that song, it can become political, depending on how you interpret it."

But beyond the village, musical censorship remains an issue on national radio and in the press. Even 15 years after the end of the eccentric dictatorship of the late Kamuzu Banda—who banned the Simon and Garfunkel song "Cecilia" because it reminded him of his mistress of the same name—there remains a lingering unwillingness to probe sensitive issues publicly.

While musicians are freer to challenge the status quo than the press, which relies heavily on revenue from government advertising, there are still consequences for criticizing power. The music of national icon Lucius Banda, for example, is banned on Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, the state-owned broadcaster, because of his politically-charged lyrics. In 2001, musician Evison Matafale died in prison, likely the result of police violence, after writing a series of letters condemning government action.

While Agorosso doesn't censor what he sings about, he does shy away from openly lambasting government. But there remains a latent critique in his songs when documenting social injustice.

"If the government is doing something to the people, then I would sing a song not to criticize but maybe to say that things shouldn't be this way," says Agorosso. "The intention is maybe not to clash with government, but to advise one another about what things should be like."

The importance of music is often overlooked in Malawi. But in offering emotional release while documenting the struggles of rural Malawians, Agorosso's music draws attention to social injustice even while public speech on such issues remains restricted. For the people here whose voices have been muted by the constraints of poverty and censorship, his small metallic pot with nylon strings brings not just music but social change.

Africa Without Maps

There's so much more to Africa than predictable headlines about war, famine and AIDS. From Ghanaian beauty pageants to music in Malawi, Africa Without Maps provides a rare glimpse of life in Africa from Journalists for Human Rights interns on the ground.

Funding for the jhr bloggers is provided by the Government of Canada's Youth International Internship Program.

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